English-Language Learners

More than a third of California’s 1.5 million English-language learners attend schools in which more than half the students are also classified as having limited proficiency in English, says a study by researchers from the Santa Barbara-based University of California Linguistic Minority Institute.

At 1,387 California schools, or 15 percent of the state’s public schools, English-language learners make up more than half of the student population, the report notes. It says such segregation of students who are learning English handicaps their progress because they lack exposure to native speakers of the language.